Best Bear protection I know of? Keep your ears open. black bears usually bolt, but will sometimes let you know they are around, and grizzlies are the boss, one should probably do what they tell you to. I carry both spray and sidearm, but a 500 lb animal with the strength of an entire NFL line (not lineMAN, the whole damn thing) can brush aside both pepper spray and JHPs and stomp you to death at leisure, if you piss it off. Incidently, a lot of human approved mace products are stronger than bear sprays. Its ok to be inhumane to humans, after all.

When I hunted elk in northern Wyoming a few years back, with a group of Forest Service retirees, they all carried a large caliber revolver as well as their rifle. They told me that bears interpreted gunshots as dinner bells during elk season.